


7x01: Eternity in an Hour

by OsleyaKomWonkru



Series: OsleyaKomWonkru's Season 7 of The 100 [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Anomaly Flashbacks, Brain Damage, Episode: s06e13 The Blood of Sanctum, Flashbacks, Gen, Medical Consequences, Post-Episode: s06e13 The Blood of Sanctum, Speculative Healing Processes, The 100 (TV) Season 7 Speculation, The Anomaly - Freeform, new worlds, time dilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-24 19:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22162840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OsleyaKomWonkru/pseuds/OsleyaKomWonkru
Summary: As the dust settles after the Anomaly’s expansion, Clarke and Bellamy reach their breaking points as they search for answers. Echo makes an unexpected choice and Octavia's mission is revealed.16 weeks. 16 episodes. An entire fan-created speculative version of season 7. Each episode will have four chapters, posted once per day from Tuesday to Friday.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake & Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake & Hope Diyoza, Bellamy Blake & Octavia Blake, Bellamy Blake/Echo, Clarke Griffin & Madi, Eric Jackson/Nathan Miller, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Octavia Blake & Charmaine Diyoza, Octavia Blake & Hope Diyoza, Octavia Blake & Indra
Series: OsleyaKomWonkru's Season 7 of The 100 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1595290
Comments: 28
Kudos: 68





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Finally! I've been planning and working on this fic since the finale aired, so I'm excited to finally be sharing it with you! If you're intrigued by the concept, please share the link with your friends, and subscribe to the series to know when new chapters/episodes are posted!
> 
> I must also give a big thank you to @easilydistractedbyfanfic, who has been my sounding board for ideas for this 'verse.
> 
> The title of this episode is from the poem "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake.

**_SANCTUM - AFTERNOON_ **

Clarke sat on the edge of the bed in Josephine’s room, watching Madi sleep. It wasn’t the best of places, given the memories Clarke had of sharing a mind with Josephine, but with more of Wonkru coming down, and with no one wanting to interrupt the Sanctum residents’ mourning for their lost citizens, most of Wonkru had been settled into the empty rooms of the palace.

The room began to shake, jolting Madi awake.

“What is it?” She asked groggily, but Clarke could only look around in terror, looking at the green smoke beginning to coalesce outside the building. Clarke jumped up to close the windows, but before she could, she felt Madi grab her arm.

“Clarke? What’s happening to me?”

Clarke turned back to face Madi, who was now surrounded by the green smoke, her touch on Clarke’s arm slowly dissipating, and Clarke could do nothing as Madi disappeared with the smoke as it rushed back out the windows.

“MADI!” Clarke screamed, but there was no response.

Clarke stood alone in Josephine’s room.

Madi was gone.

**_GABRIEL’S CAMP - AFTERNOON_ **

“OCTAVIA!” Bellamy yelled again, dropping his face into his hands, knowing but not caring that he was smearing his sister’s blood on his face, _his sister’s blood,_ the spilling of which he’d been hopeless to stop.

He’d just gotten her back, and now she was gone.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and jolted up.

“Octavia?”

But it wasn’t Octavia. It was Echo.

“I’m sorry.” Echo said. “That I’m not her. But we will find her.”

“She was here, she was in my arms, and she just - is she even - is she alive? Where did she go? What the hell is this Anomaly?”

“We will find out.”

Bellamy got to his feet, turning back towards the tent. “I’m going to kill that woman.”

“Bellamy, no.”

“She tried to kill my sister, Echo. My sister could very well be dead. We don’t even know.”

“She is our only hope of finding out what happened to Octavia. We need her.”

“I’m going to make her tell us everything. Gabriel too. He’s hiding something, I know it.”

Mission face set, Bellamy stormed back into the tent, Echo following him, to the sight of Gabriel lifting the woman onto the gurney. She was still unconscious. As Bellamy looked at her more closely, he noticed that she had tattoos on her face that resembled those that Octavia had had on her back.

He knew that his sister had exchanged words with this woman. But with the roar of the Anomaly around them, he hadn’t been able to make them out. Though he had noticed the heartbroken look on the woman’s face as she’d embraced Octavia. He hoped that meant that she regretted what she was doing.

“Who are you?” Bellamy asked, staring at the woman and the mysterious symbols on her face.

“Octavia called her Hope.” Gabriel said.

“Does that mean something to you?” Bellamy asked. “Because it doesn’t to me.”

“At first Octavia thought it was Diyoza who was here.” Echo said carefully. “But this clearly isn’t her.”

“Of course.” Gabriel said thoughtfully. “Of course, that would make sense.”

“Care to share?” Bellamy asked, exasperated. “My sister has vanished, with a critical stab wound in her belly, and you’re just being casual about this.”

“Four days ago, when we were going to the Anomaly.” Gabriel said. “Octavia, Diyoza and I. We all… saw things. As you do when you approach it. It is the source of the red sun toxin. Octavia saw something that scared her to her core, but I don’t know what it was. But Diyoza saw something else. She saw her child. Her child that was at that time not born yet - and she called her Hope.”

“Four days ago.” Echo said slowly. “And you think this is - this is _that_ Hope? Diyoza’s daughter?”

“You got a better idea?”

“How in the world could someone who was still a fetus four days ago be a young woman now?” Bellamy asked. “That doesn’t make any kind of sense. Time doesn’t work like that.”

“Bellamy, I was right there as both Diyoza and Octavia walked into the Anomaly. I saw it happen. I saw your sister go in, and then come running out no more than ten seconds later. She walked in there dying of old age, arm crippled, the aging reaching her brain, hair turned into dreadlocks from being submerged in the quicksand -”

“Wait, hold up.” Bellamy held up a hand. “How was my sister dying of old age? She’s twenty three years old.”

“She was hit by what we call a temporal flare. A strange time anomaly, a microcosm, perhaps, of the Anomaly itself. I don’t know. But she was only slightly touched by it, her hand was exposed while she was otherwise submerged in quicksand. Diyoza dug her out, because the sand had frozen and the trees in the area petrified. That’s what the flares do instantly to exposed organic matter. So it had begun to age her, from the hand up.”

“How is something like that even possible?” Echo questioned.

“I don’t know, but it is real. I’ve seen people hit by those flares full-on, and there’s nothing left of them but dust. Your sister was extremely lucky.”

“But she’s also not aging unnaturally anymore.” Bellamy said. “You stopped it somehow?”

“No. The Anomaly - whatever, whoever, is in the Anomaly - stopped it. Because she went into the Anomaly like that, and she came out ten seconds later, completely healed, hair clean and longer than it had been, and she had that tattoo on her back. Does all of that happen in ten seconds?”

“I suppose not.”

“I’ve lived here a long time, Bellamy. I’ve seen dozens of people walk into the Anomaly. No one ever came out of it until your sister did four days ago. I don’t know what happened to her in there, she couldn’t remember either, but something did. Something powerful that we don’t understand.” Gabriel looked at the unconscious woman. “So until she wakes up, or Octavia comes back, we won’t know what that something was.”

**_FOUR DAYS AGO_ **

**_ANOMALY - NIGHT_ **

“No!” Octavia yelled as she watched Diyoza disappear into the Anomaly.

Though her newly old bones protested, Octavia dragged herself towards it, not willing to let Diyoza go, not willing to let her disappear alone, not when she was the last person in the universe who cared about her.

“Diyoza, wait!”

As Gabriel watched, Octavia was swallowed up by the Anomaly, disappearing from view.

* * *

She wasn’t dead.

That was the first thing that Octavia realized as she kept moving forward, unharmed, despite the yellow-green flames licking all around her. She saw no sign of Diyoza, heard no sound but the roar of the Anomaly itself.

She passed from the flames into an odd-shaped clearing, flames visible again just a few feet up ahead. A _spiral,_ Octavia remembered. She didn’t know the significance, but since Diyoza wasn’t waiting in the clearing, Octavia pushed on.

The closer Octavia moved towards the middle of the Anomaly, the louder the roar, her voice disappearing into the wind as she called out for Diyoza.

_Where are you?_ Octavia wondered.

Octavia crossed the final clearing to the centre of the Anomaly, flames glowing brighter than anywhere else, the sound almost unbearable. Octavia covered her ears as best she could as she staggered into the bright light, closing her eyes as the light became unbearable too.

A few more steps, and the wind stilled. The roar dissipated.

Octavia opened her eyes slowly, uncovering her ears at the same time, and blinked in astonishment.

She was standing on the edge of a city.

Not a city like Polis, not something that had been dredged up from the wreckage of a world that had been - this was a proper city from the world before the bombs. Bright towers spiralling towards the sky up ahead, streets lined with trees.

But she didn’t see any people, not at first - but as soon as she spotted what could have been people in the distance, her age caught up to her, and Octavia collapsed to the ground.

* * *

Octavia came to in a bright white room, like the ones in Mount Weather that Monty and Jasper had told her about. The rooms they kept them in before giving them a golden existence… and then began stealing their bone marrow.

She bolted upright in a panic, clawing at the IV in her arm, almost pulling it out before she realized… it was in her left arm.

Her left arm, that looked like her right arm again.

Leaving the IV be for the moment, Octavia examined her left arm carefully, but to all appearances, it looked as it had before she’d been hit by the temporal flare. Her bones didn’t ache anymore, her head felt clear and not addled by madness as she’d been on the way to the Anomaly.

Running a hand over her face, Octavia noted that the cuts and bruises she’d borne from her multiple fights and beatings over the past week had also vanished into thin air.

She was _healed._ But how?

The door opened, and a young woman in a white coat with a clipboard came in. She started, clearly surprised to see Octavia awake, but schooled her features to neutral.

Octavia noted that the door hadn’t been locked, and since she wasn’t strapped down, that meant they didn’t anticipate any problems… or was it just to create a false sense of security? Open but cautious would be the way to approach this situation, Octavia thought.

“Hello.” The woman said.

“Hi.” Octavia said carefully. “Who are you?”

“I am Doctor Althea Warner.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re in the hospital. Do you remember what happened to you?”

“I… what happened to cause me to have to be in the hospital, or how I got here?”

“Start with the first, follow with the second.”

“I was in the forest, stuck in quicksand. I… I couldn’t get out when a temporal flare came. I sank beneath it, but since my hand was still touching the surface, it aged me. Diyoza dug me out, I - where’s Diyoza? She entered the Anomaly just a few seconds before I did. She’s pregnant. Is she okay? Is she here too?”

“Charmaine Diyoza was admitted to this hospital just a few hours ago, ready to give birth.”

“Give birth? No, no, she… she wasn’t due yet.”

“Oh, she is full term. She arrived here several months ago, the pregnancy has been progressing quite well. I’ve been her primary care doctor, as I am for everyone who passes through what you call the Anomaly on Planet Alpha.”

“Wait. Hold on. Several months ago? How long have I been here? How long have I been asleep?”

“One of our city caretakers found you collapsed in the street yesterday and brought you in. You’ve been asleep for about fourteen hours.”

“Diyoza entered the Anomaly just before I did.”

“Maybe just a few moments on that side, but time moves differently here compared to that world.”

“I don’t understand.”

Dr Warner smiled sympathetically. “I know. This can all be very confusing for those who come here. I’m afraid I’m not well equipped to answer those questions, since I know no other world. But if I could just examine you to make sure your healing is finished, then I can have you brought to someone who can answer your questions.”

“I want to see Diyoza first.”

“We can see whether she’s given birth yet. If she’s still in labour, then you will have to wait until the baby is born. She’s in good hands, don’t worry. For the moment, can I please examine you?”

Octavia nodded warily, taking note of anything in the vicinity that she could use as a weapon if needed, eyes settling on a glass of water on a tray just a few feet away. It would do in a pinch.

Dr Warner came closer, setting the clipboard down at the foot of the bed. She took note of Octavia’s wariness, holding her hands out in front of herself as she approached.

“I just need to check your vitals, and draw a tiny bit of blood so that I can make sure the treatment is holding. Okay? I know this is a new world for you, and I don’t know what kind of world you came from, but you’re safe here. You don’t have to be afraid.”

“I’m not.”

“First we’ll check your breathing and your heart rate.” Dr Warner said, reaching for her stethoscope. “Can you lean forwards, please?”

Octavia did as she asked, breathing deep when told to, as Dr Warner ran her stethoscope over her back and then her chest. She checked Octavia’s eyes and ears, and then pricked her finger, squeezing a bit of blood onto a slide.

While Dr Warner took the slide over to a microscope in the corner, Octavia examined her left arm again, unable to believe that somehow she’d been healed overnight, that just hours ago she’d been in danger of dying of old age, and now… it was as if none of her injuries or accidents over the past week had even happened.

Including the finger prick that had only _just_ happened. That was weird. Octavia squeezed each of her fingertips, in case she’d forgotten which one Dr Warner had tested, but they were all completely free of any sort of wound.

“Remarkable.” Octavia heard Dr Warner exclaim.

“What is it?” Octavia asked, closing her fist quickly, not wanting to give any more information than her blood may have already provided.

“The treatment is working even better than we could have anticipated. I’ll have to check with some more sophisticated equipment to be sure, but it would seem the elevated levels of radiation in your blood have combined with the tachyons whose polarity we reversed to…” She trailed off, noting Octavia’s blank look. “You’re not a scientist.”

“No. I’m not.”

“I’m sorry, just most of the people who have come through to us from Planet Alpha were curious scientists. Even your Diyoza, while a former soldier, she still has some amount of scientific and medical training too. But you’re different from her. You’re not from the same world, are you?”

“That depends on what you mean by the same world.”

“Were you born on the same planet?”

“Diyoza was born on Earth. I was born on a space station that was orbiting Earth over a hundred years later. I only touched the ground for the first time when I was seventeen.”

“That could account for the elevated radiation in your blood. Solar radiation.”

“Yeah. Helped us survive the radiation levels on Earth when we went down there.” Octavia looked down. “For all the good that did, because then the world ended again. And again. Which brought us to Planet Alpha.”

“What was left of humanity on Earth came with you to Planet Alpha?”

“Yeah.”

Dr Warner regarded her with an inscrutable look, nodding, as if confirming something to herself. “It seems we’ve forgotten an introduction. I told you my name. What’s yours?”

“Octavia Blake.”

“Well, Octavia, I imagine the Council is going to have a lot of questions for you, but first, what do you say we head down to the labour ward, and see how your friend is doing?”

“Yeah.”

“There are some clothes for you to choose from right over there. We do still have the clothes you arrived in, but they may draw more attention than you’d like here. But I can bring them for you if you want.”

“Whatever is fine. Thanks.”

“I’ll be waiting just outside the door when you’re ready.”

**_SANCTUM - AFTERNOON_ **

“MADI!” Clarke yelled, rushing to the window, but finding nothing, the smoke had faded away entirely, the entire place looking as normal as it had before. The Sanctum residents milling about outside looked up at her, and while they definitely seemed to have seen the green smoke, they weren’t panicked like she was. Had they not lost anyone?

Clarke rushed out into the hallway. “MADI!” She yelled again, running down the hall, crashing straight into Jackson, who looked as panicked as she did.

“What happened to Madi?” Jackson asked. “Nate just… _vanished…_ and I know it sounds crazy but I _know_ what I saw. I know it. I saw it.”

“A cloud of green smoke swallowed him up?” Clarke asked.

“Yeah. Is that what happened to Madi?”

Clarke nodded, looking around frantically, as if the empty hallways would provide them with some sort of answers. “MADI!”

“She’s gone, Clarke.” Jackson said softly. “I don’t know where, but I know it can’t be anywhere you can yell to.”

Murphy came up the stairs, eyes narrowing in on the two of them. “Some people disappear into thin air up here?”

“Yeah.” Jackson said. “What, did you see them? Did you see something?”

“A big cloud of green smoke came billowing through the tavern.” Murphy said. “Took some people.”

“Who? Who did it take?” Clarke asked, collapsing against the wall as she shook in terror and fear. Jackson tried to keep her from slipping down to the ground, leaning on her for his own balance and confidence.

“Gaia and Niylah.”

Not Niylah too. Everyone who Clarke had ever relied on for some sense of emotional stability was gone.

No. Not everyone. Murphy hadn’t said anything about…

“Bellamy. Did it take him?” Clarke questioned, standing up straight and wiping her tears from her face. “Tell me, Murphy. Did it take Bellamy too?”

“Bellamy isn’t here.” Murphy said. “I thought you knew.”

“What do you mean? Where is he?”

“He left hours ago. With Gabriel, Echo and Octavia.”

“Where did they go? Why?”

“To something called the Anomaly Stone. We discovered last night that apparently Octavia has a tattoo of it on her back. Got Gabriel all excited.”

“Anomaly Stone. That’s what Gabriel called it?”

“Yeah.”

Clarke thought back to what Gabriel had mentioned about the Anomaly when she’d been in his camp. Some sort of strange mystery of Sanctum that made odd noises, swallowed people up… but somehow Octavia had come back. Come back with no memories, but with a mystery on her back that had only just been revealed.

Clarke’s head started pounding, and she winced, holding her hand to her temple. She felt like she knew something _more,_ but she couldn’t find it, not in her mind, not anymore.

But there was someone who might know.

“Russell.” Clarke said. “He has to know about this Anomaly. Maybe that’s what took our people.”

“He’s imprisoned just down the hall.” Emori said, coming up the stairs behind Murphy, followed by Raven and Indra. 

Clarke was on a mission now, despite the splitting headache, and led the charge to Russell’s room. The two Wonkru guards standing in front of his door moved out of the way as the crowd of them approached, wisely noting that Clarke was not to be messed with.

Russell turned towards them as the door opened, his vicious smile in place.

“Did it take something precious to you?” Russell asked. “It did, didn’t it? Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

“It took Madi.” Clarke said, grabbing him by the throat and pushing him up against the wall. “You’re going to tell me why.”

“I can’t do that.” Russell rasped. “We lost dozens to the Anomaly over the years. But it has never shifted from its configuration like that before. Nothing we did to the Stone ever changed it.”

“Tell us more about this stone.” Murphy demanded as Clarke released Russell from the wall and slammed him into a chair.

“We call it the Anomaly Stone. The only thing we know it does for certain is suck up all of the radio signals on this moon. But we don’t know what it is for. Just that it is an underground sphere near the Anomaly with all sorts of symbols on it.”

“The notes that Gabriel had in his camp.” Clarke said.

Russell nodded. “While I focused on building a life for our people here, he was always interested in the great mysteries of this world, the Anomaly chief among them. We’ve lost dozens to the Anomaly over the centuries, it pulled people in like moths to a flame. Why it just expanded, I don’t know. What I do know is that no one has ever come back from it.”

“You’re wrong about that.” Clarke said.

Russell frowned. “Did one of your people go in and then come back?”

“Clarke, are you sure?” Murphy cautioned. “Are you sure you want to tell him?”

“It took Madi. If he can tell us how to get her back, I’ll do what I have to.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Russell said, taking measure of both Clarke and Murphy. “It was that brunette, wasn’t it? The one who never came back from the trip out to retrieve your transport, the one who tried to save Rose from Gabriel’s Children?”

“Octavia.” Clarke said. “Yes. She went in and she came back.”

“She came back with the symbols of this stone tattooed on her back.” Murphy said. “What does that mean?”

“If that tattoo revealed a code, and Gabriel was foolish enough to use it, that could be what took your people.” Russell said. “The only question is, are any of them going to come back here to tell you why?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng:
> 
> _Ani - Aunt_

**_GABRIEL’S CAMP - AFTERNOON_ **

“Tell me everything about this Anomaly.” Bellamy said, taking a seat in a chair next to the gurney. “If you leave anything out, you will pay.”

“There isn’t much we do know about it.” Gabriel said. “It is in the shape of a spiral. The red sun toxin is thick in the air surrounding it, causing visions, of your deepest desire or your greatest fear, or both at the same time.”

“Why did you take my sister there?”

“Her hand - the one that had aged - was drawing spirals. Diyoza was drawing spirals in her notebook.” Gabriel pulled his shirt aside on his chest like he had when he’d shown them. “That’s a sign that someone’s being called by the Anomaly. It has called me too.”

_“Called_ you”? Bellamy asked incredulously. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? You said you never went in. So why the tattoo?”

“It was exploring nearby that I found the Stone. Then I made it my mission to figure out what it means. It is connected somehow, the spiral of the stone, the spiral of the Anomaly - it has to mean something. There’s something in there that calls people to it.”

“But you’ve resisted actually going in. Why?”

“As your sister and Diyoza like to remind me, I’m a coward. I’m not proud of it. I’m trying to change that, especially given that I only have one life to live now. I was never brave enough to die until my last body. Now I am.”

“So you could walk in there right now, find out what’s going on?”

“It might not be that simple, Bellamy. We have no idea what’s going on on the other side. Where it goes, what happens when you get there, if it even takes you to the same place each time. There’s something unpleasant going on, we know that much, and your sister is right in the middle of it.”

“Thanks to you.”

“I didn’t invite her into my forest.” Gabriel said. “This is a dangerous place. She should have stayed in Sanctum if she wanted to be safe.”

Bellamy looked down, unable to meet Gabriel’s eyes. Echo squeezed his shoulder, also not looking up.

“Unless… unless it wasn’t her choice to stay in the forest.” Gabriel said thoughtfully. “I did wonder about that.”

“It’s my fault my sister is dying. Or dead, for all we know.” Bellamy muttered under his breath, cradling his head in his hands. “It’s all my fault.”

“There you go again.” Came a new voice, tired but snark-laden. “All woe is me without understanding a damn thing.”

Hope was awake.

**_FOUR DAYS AGO_ **

**_THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ANOMALY - DAY_ **

Octavia followed Dr Warner down the halls of the hospital, feeling out of place and out of time among all of the doctors and nurses and patients in hospital gowns - another world out of her stories of old, not the Greek myths Bellamy had raised her on, but the more recent history, the stories of Earth before the bombs.

She pulled the black hoodie she was wearing tighter around herself, wary of this new world and the strangers in it. She was uncomfortable enough in crowds of people she _did_ know. At least these people didn’t know _her._ What she was capable of. What she’d done. Maybe this was a chance to start over, in a world where people didn’t know her past. And so she had stifled the urge to break the glass and hide a shard of it in her sleeve.

_As long as you draw breath, you can turn it around,_ Diyoza had told her. This was her opportunity to make that real.

(And if worst came to worst, Octavia knew she could take these people in hand-to-hand if she had to.)

Dr Warner conferred with a number of doctors and nurses outside a room labeled “Delivery Room 2”, and then motioned for Octavia to join them.

“Charmaine had her baby about half an hour ago. You’re welcome to go inside.”

Octavia nodded, knocking on the door softly as she pulled it open, stepping inside quickly and pulling it shut behind her.

“Well well well, look who it is.” Diyoza said, voice exhausted but still carrying the same snark Octavia was used to. “Came into the Anomaly after all? What changed your mind?”

“You did.” Octavia shrugged. “I was only a few seconds behind you. But time… time moves differently here, the doctor said.”

“I’ve heard that rumour. I see they healed you up nicely.”

“Yeah.” Octavia rubbed her left arm. “They say I came through last night, and then a bunch of scientific stuff that I didn’t understand, but yeah… all healed. What have you been doing here for the past few months then?”

“Besides being pregnant?” Diyoza raised an eyebrow at her. “Well, after my interrogation about the worlds I knew, they gave me an easy job filing books in the library. Beats running for your life through a toxic forest.”

“And that’s it? You’re good with that?”

“Immunity from past crimes, good food, a good bed, and a peaceful future for me and my daughter?” Diyoza looked down at the bundle in her arms with a fond smile. “Yeah, I’m good with that.”

Octavia inched closer. “Is that… Hope?”

“This is Hope.” Diyoza gave Octavia a look. “She won’t bite. Come on.”

Octavia came up to the side of the bed, taking a closer look at the baby in Diyoza’s arms. She’d never seen a newborn baby before, and was terrified at just how small she looked. How vulnerable. Octavia was confident that Diyoza could take anything that tried to attack her child, but she was surprised about how protective _she_ suddenly felt over the small girl.

She reached out a hand, but pulled it back quickly. No. She’d irrevocably taint the child somehow, like any child who had come into her care, badness always followed.

“It’s okay.” Diyoza encouraged. “Do you want to hold her?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Octavia was looking at Hope, not Diyoza, and thus it came as a shock that somehow without even disturbing the child Diyoza was able to reach out a quick hand and grab Octavia by the back of the neck, pulling their heads close together.

“They’re interested in her. Not so much me.” Diyoza whispered. “I mean, I get it, a baby that has been through hundreds of years of cryo in utero, and they’ve never had a pregnant woman cross through the Anomaly before, so there’s some curiosity as to those effects, but… I don’t want anything to happen without my consent. And I’m going to have to sleep sometime. Will you keep her safe?”

“You do remember what happened to the last kid I tried to take care of, right?”

“This time stay with the kid instead of going for the bad guy, if push comes to shove.”

Octavia looked back down at Hope, and reached her hand out again. One of Hope’s tiny hands closed around her pinky finger, holding on surprisingly tightly.

“Hope, meet your aunt Octavia.” Diyoza murmured to the baby. “She’s going to take care of you when I can’t, right?”

“Right.” Octavia repeated. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you, Hope. I promise.”

**_GABRIEL’S CAMP - AFTERNOON_ **

All eyes turned to Hope as she sat up, taking measure of each of them, eyes narrowing as she focused in on Bellamy.

“You’re him.” She said with a note of derision in her voice.

“Him?” Bellamy asked. “You’re going to have to be a bit more specific than that.”

“Bellamy. Octavia’s brother.”

“I am. Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Hope Diyoza. I believe you know my mother Charmaine?”

“Yeah. I do.” Bellamy said. “And now you’re going to tell me why you just stabbed my sister.”

“I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities.”

Hope looked at him expectantly, and Bellamy was confused, her words seeming familiar somehow, tugging at threads deep in his mind, until -

“O gods above, inspire this undertaking - which you’ve changed as well - and guide my poem in its epic sweep from the world’s beginning to present day.” Bellamy finished, quoting the first lines of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses._

“At least you remember that much.” Hope said, sitting up and preparing to stand when Echo stopped her.

“You’re staying there until we have the answers we need.” Echo said, with a voice that indicated she wasn’t kidding.

Hope rolled her eyes. “Seriously? You’re going to do this now? I’ve got work to do.”

“You’re going to tell me why you stabbed my sister. And then how to save her.” Bellamy yelled. “No more games.”

“She understood why I had to stab her. She’s doing just fine and she doesn’t need your saving, _Bellamy.”_ Hope spat at him. “In all the stories she ever told me, I could never understand why she deified you like she did. Why she loved you so much, despite everything you did to her. It’s possible she’s forgiven you. But I sure haven’t.”

“She told you stories about me.” Bellamy said. “When? How?”

“When I was growing up.” Hope said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. _“Ani_ Octavia helped raise me. I love her like I love my mother.”

“She helped raise you.” Bellamy said, disbelieving. “How is that possible? She’s the same age as you. Give or take a few years.”

“She isn’t. She only appears to be.”

“Appears to be.” Echo asked incredulously. “Magic, or something to make her look younger?”

Hope scoffed. “There’s no such thing as magic. You of all people should know that by now.”

“You know who I am?”

“I assume you’re Echo.”

“I am. How would you know that?”

“Like I said. Octavia helped raise me. I know about all of you.” Hope turned to look at Gabriel. “Even you. But less about you, since my mother and _ani_ didn’t know you very well.”

“Enough!” Bellamy bellowed, leaping forwards and pinning Hope down to the gurney by the throat. “We’ll get to those details later. Right now I just need some simple answers - why did you try to _murder_ someone you call _ani_ and claim to love as family? And where is she now?”

“I didn’t try to murder her. Not to mention that I couldn’t kill her even if I wanted to - which I don’t, for the record - no one could. Not like that, anyway.”

“A stab wound in the gut couldn’t kill her?” Bellamy scoffed. “Right. You said there was no such thing as magic.”

“There isn’t. There is science.” Hope was strong, pushing herself up and throwing Bellamy off of her, sending him tumbling to the ground. _“Ani_ is special.” She jerked her head to the side, staring off into empty space for a few moments, before turning to face Gabriel. “You said that too. You may have thought she didn’t hear you, but she did. Just a few days ago. You told Bellamy that she was special, but he didn’t believe you.”

“Now how the hell would you know that?” Gabriel asked, staring at her curiously.

“Because I come from a world you don’t yet understand.” Hope looked at each of them in turn. “Something bad is coming. Several somethings, actually. And if you want any chance of stopping them, any chance of seeing your sister again, any chance of saving your people’s lives, you’re going to listen to me.”

With that said, Hope collapsed back onto the gurney, passed out again.

Bellamy looked at Gabriel, but Gabriel just shrugged. “I’ve got about as much of an idea of what’s going on as you do.”

“I have to go in there. I have to find her.” Bellamy said, making for the door, but both Echo and Gabriel hauled him back.

“You can’t go in there, Bellamy.” Gabriel said. “As much as we don’t know what’s going on, Hope is convinced that Octavia is fine. If you go in there without us knowing the whole story, without knowing what Hope means about something bad coming, you put your sister at risk. Is that what you want to do?”

“I have to save her.”

“Maybe listen to what Hope said. Octavia doesn’t need you to save her. And if you’re the reason that she was left in this forest in the first place, then it would be good for you to understand what that meant to her and think about why she doesn’t need your help.”

**_SANCTUM - AFTERNOON_ **

Clarke paced the floor, trying to calm herself, furious at Russell, furious at this Anomaly, uncomprehending of what was going on, her head still _pounding pounding pounding,_ as she tried to figure out what she could do, what any of them could do.

Emori ran back into the room. “I checked all of the levels, talked to the people. No one else is missing.”

Raven pulled Clarke over to the bed and made her sit down. “Okay. So the only people missing from here are Madi, Gaia, Miller and Niylah.”

“And Bellamy.” Clarke whispered.

“We don’t know that. We can only go on what we _know_ for sure. What do Madi, Gaia, Miller and Niylah have in common, that the rest of us don’t?”

“They lived on Earth?” Emori suggested. “But Miller was born on the Ark, no?”

“Right.” Murphy said. “Gaia, Miller and Niylah were part of Wonkru. Lived in the bunker. But Madi didn’t.”

“But Madi joined Wonkru.” Indra said, stepping forward from where she’d been resting against the wall. “Madi swore a blood oath to Blodreina.”

“That’s not who she is anymore.” Clarke said, holding her pounding head. “Octavia is not Blodreina anymore. She’s different. Besides, the rest of you are still here. You were Octavia’s closest advisor in the bunker. Why are you still here? Didn’t you swear a blood oath to her?”

“She never asked and I never offered.” Indra said evenly. “But blood calls to blood.”

“We live in a new world now, Indra, there is no _jus drein jus daun_ anymore.” Raven said.

“I didn’t say blood must have blood. I said blood calls to blood.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If Octavia is somehow the key to this mystery, her blood is in their veins, and vice versa. They might have been called somehow by this Anomaly because of her.”

Russell began to laugh. “Your people are gone. Just like dozens of my people. They’ll be gone forever.”

“I refuse to believe that.” Clarke said, standing up and walking over to Russell, taking a swing at his head, but missing by quite a distance, which only caused him to laugh even louder.

“What’s going on?” Clarke said, holding up her hand as her vision started to blur and go double, triple, even more frames than she could even count. “What’s happening to me?”

“Clarke!” Jackson yelled, leaping forwards to catch her as she started to collapse. “Help me!”

They lowered Clarke to the floor, seeing that she was beginning to bleed from the nose again. Something was wrong.

“Probably the brain damage.” Russell laughed. “From fighting my daughter. Josie gets the last laugh anyway, as Clarke dies.”

“She’s not going to die.” Jackson said. “Help me get her to the operating room.”

“You can’t take out her mind drive, not in this state. Not if you want her to live.” Russell said. “But if you don’t mind her dying, then by all means, go ahead.”

“Stay here and guard him.” Jackson said to Murphy and Indra. “Don’t let him out of your sight and don’t let him talk to anyone.”

Raven and Emori helped Jackson carry Clarke down the stairs and through the palace to the operating room, putting her down carefully on the gurney.

“Should we take it out of her head?” Raven asked. “Russell could be lying to us.”

“He could be lying, but he could also be right.” Jackson said, turning Clarke on her side. “I’m not going to risk taking it out right now. I just want to run some tests to see what’s wrong.”

Jackson looked at the stitched up incision on Clarke’s neck, checking for any signs of infection, but it looked all right. He cleaned the edges a bit, just to make sure no infection would set in, and then shifted Clarke onto her back.

Raven and Emori sat by as Jackson ran a number of tests, jumping to his assistance as Clarke shot up to wakefulness in the middle of them.

“I think we need to sedate her.” Jackson said as Clarke collapsed again. “I’m going to induce her into a coma. She’s too stressed right now, with everything that is happening.”

“Of course she’s stressed.” Raven said. “She lost her mother. Madi is missing. We’re all stressed.”

“But the rest of us haven’t been experiencing brain damage from multiple minds warring in our brains.” Emori explained. “That’s why Josephine wanted to wipe Clarke. It wasn’t because Clarke was an annoyance in her head that came out while she was sleeping, it was because two minds sharing a brain and body was causing brain damage that would cause the body to die.”

“So Josephine is gone, but Clarke is still feeling the effects of that. Her brain is still damaged.” Jackson said. “Her brain needs time to rest and repair itself. She’s not going to get that if she’s awake and panicking and stressed. Inducing her into a coma is the best answer if we want her to get better.” Jackson looked at Raven. “Because we all know she isn’t just going to be awake and not use her brain. Sound familiar?”

Raven gave him that, remembering her own brain injury demands for “rest” back in Becca’s lab. But Raven also knew that what she’d done to purge ALIE’s code and heal her mind wasn’t something that would work in Clarke’s case, where there wasn’t anything else _there_ anymore but the damage had been more significant and needed time to heal naturally.

“Yeah. Good plan.” Emori said. “Let Clarke sleep. While she does that, the rest of us can… what? Go out there to see if the others were taken by the Anomaly too?”

“No. We wait here.” Raven said firmly. “No point in getting lost in the woods. If they’re gone into the Anomaly, going there won’t help them and it might take us too. If they didn’t disappear, they’ll come back here eventually and tell us what’s going on. We work the problem from here.”

“But how?” Emori asked. “We don’t even know what we’re looking at.”

“Computers are right over there.” Raven jerked her head in their direction. “See if you can find out anything in the Primes’ research notes that might say something about the Anomaly.”


	3. Chapter 3

**_SANCTUM - AFTERNOON_ **

Murphy and Indra observed Russell, who they had tied to a chair. He’d stopped laughing, and was observing the two of them carefully.

“Tell me about this tattoo.” Indra said, turning to Murphy. “You saw it?”

“Yeah.” Murphy said. “All sorts of symbols all over Octavia’s back in the shape of a spiral. Apparently Octavia thought she’d only been in the Anomaly for a few seconds. Gabriel was sure she was in there a lot longer.”

“Could you draw some of these symbols?”

“I guess. Maybe. I don’t remember a lot of them.”

Murphy gave no care to Russell’s privacy and rustled through the desk by the door to find some paper, bringing it over to where he sat with Indra, sketching a few of the symbols he remembered onto the page. Some interlocking triangles, the letter O, some weird O with some tails, a triangle with tails. Indra watched with interest, taking the page from him when he was done.

“Do those mean anything to you?” Murphy asked.

Indra’s eyes slid to Russell. “They might.”

“Did Octavia have those tattoos already? Was Gabriel wrong about them being new?”

“No. The only tattoo Octavia had that I knew of was the one on her right shoulder. Nothing as delicate as a map of symbols. That isn’t exactly her style. But this appears to be an Octavia I know nothing about.”

“I mean, I’m no expert either. I haven’t actually spoken to Octavia in years. We’ve only been in the same place a few times since the days of the dropship. Polis during the fight against ALIE. The camp in the desert after we saved her from sacrificing herself. Last night here.”

“She’s a very different girl from when I first met her.”

“She’s a very different _woman_ from who you last knew.” Murphy said. “I didn’t really know her as Blodreina besides that one night, but what Clarke said is right. I’ve heard the stories about the great and terrible Blodreina, and that’s not who I saw last night as we were saving people. She’s the reason we saved them instead of burning them all down. Is that something Blodreina would do?”

“Perhaps. Depending on who the people were.”

“Would she save your daughter?”

“Perhaps.”

“Wow, you don’t really know Octavia at all, do you?”

“I did once. Once when she was still a girl trying to find her place in the world. I gave her the tools on how to do that. Then she surpassed all of us.”

“Right. She saved all of your asses when she decided to transcend clan boundaries and invite everyone into the bunker. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“You survived. You don’t have anything to be angry about.”

“Lots of people didn’t.”

“We saved as many as we could. That was the moment I was most proud of her.”

“Do you think Octavia took Gaia? Now, I mean?”

“They weren’t on very good terms when they last spoke. But Octavia was willing to give her life to save Gaia. It is possible that she has now called in that debt.”

“But why Madi? Why Miller? Why Niylah?”

“We will have to wait and find out.”

**_GABRIEL’S CAMP - EVENING_ **

Bellamy paced around the camp, seeing the Anomaly through the trees, wanting to run for it, wanting to dive into it, come hell or high water, and find his sister. But Echo was watching him, and he knew that if he made any move in that direction that she’d tackle him and drag him back into the tent where Gabriel would sedate him. She’d already threatened to do it once.

“Where are you, O?” Bellamy asked into the dark. “Where are you? What happened to you?”

No response came.

“She has a mission of some kind.” Echo said. “I don’t know what that mission is, but it is an important one, and something went wrong. That something going wrong is either what brought Octavia back here a few days ago, or what brought Hope here now. Or possibly both. But if Hope is right, there’s a lot we don’t know. A lot that even _she_ might not know.”

“Bellamy! Echo!” Came Gabriel’s shout from the tent. “Hope’s awake again.”

Bellamy and Echo raced back into the tent, seeing where Hope was sitting up, drinking from a canteen. She grimaced at the taste of whatever it was Gabriel had given her, and handed it back to him.

“There’s a lot you don’t know.” Hope said. “But there’s only so much I can tell you. The rest I have to show you. But I can’t do that here.”

“We’re not going anywhere until you give me the answers that you still haven’t given a proper answer to.” Bellamy said. “Why did you stab my sister if you claim to love her as a mother? How are you sure that she’s all right? How could she have raised you? Where is she now?”

“To know where she is you need to understand where she’s been. You may as well sit down, it is going to be a long story.” Hope said. “It all started on the day I was born.”

**_FOUR DAYS AGO_ **

**_THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ANOMALY - DAY_ **

Octavia sat in a chair by the side of Diyoza’s hospital bed, cradling Hope in her arms as Diyoza slept. Hours of labour had taken their toll, and Diyoza needed her rest. True to her word, Octavia held onto Hope.

She knew that the Council would be wanting to see her at some point, and Diyoza had said to bring Hope with her if she wasn’t awake yet. Hope was not to be left alone with any of these people.

Soon enough, a soft knock came on the door, and Dr Warner popped her head in a few seconds later.

“Octavia, are you able to meet with the Council now? They’re very interested in speaking with you. We can take the child to the nursery.”

Octavia held Hope close to her chest protectively. “Actually… Diyoza has insisted that the child stay with me if she isn’t awake.”

Dr Warner turned back to some other people in the hallway outside the room that Octavia couldn’t see, and then turned back towards her.

“The Council won’t object if you bring the child.”

Octavia got to her feet, holding Hope carefully, and took one long look at Diyoza, who was still sleeping peacefully, and then stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind her.

“Here you are.” One of the nurses offered Octavia a loop of fabric, which she just looked at strangely.

“It’s a sling for the baby.” Dr Warner explained. “Keeps the baby close to you, but frees up your hands.”

“Oh. Right.”

It took three people, made more difficult by the fact that Octavia refused to let go of Hope for even a second, but they managed, arranging the sling so that Hope was bound close to Octavia’s chest. Octavia still kept a hand on her, reassuring herself that the baby was fine, and then followed Dr Warner through the hospital and to some sort of council room.

“Octavia Blake, your Excellencies.” Dr Warner said as they entered. “And the terrorist’s child.”

_“Former_ terrorist.” One of the council members emphasized. “Thank you, Dr Warner. Please, sit down, Miss Blake.”

Dr Warner left the room, and Octavia took a seat in the last chair available around the table. The looks they gave her were disconcerting, and she wasn’t sure what to make of them. Six years of living with Wonkru hadn’t made up for seventeen years with barely any human contact, and this was a completely different culture that Octavia knew nothing about.

“I am Councilman Eric Chaplin. I expect you have a lot of questions.” The man sitting across from her said, his piercing gaze fixed on her. “And we will answer them in due time. But first we need to know about your Earth. We understand you came to what you call Planet Alpha from there.”

“Earth is gone. It took three apocalyptic events to do it in completely, but it’s gone.” Octavia looked down at the table. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you sorry because you’re informing us that the Earth is gone, or are you sorry because you caused it?” A woman asked brusquely.

Octavia’s head snapped back up. “Excuse me?”

“It’s a simple question.”

_Not really,_ Octavia thought. Maybe she couldn’t hide from her past as much as she hoped she could. She didn’t know what Diyoza had already told them, and judging by how Diyoza had been ready to tell Gabriel anything he wanted to know about what Nightbloods they had, she had to assume that Diyoza would have told them anything they wanted to know. Honesty had always been Octavia’s best policy anyhow, something she’d clung to for years, not lying to her people even when it would have been so much easier to lie to them so they wouldn’t know the truth.

“I… I didn’t push the button. But the last time, when all that was left was one green valley, the rest of Earth a wasteland… a madman pressed the button to blow it up because he couldn’t stand the idea of my army taking it instead. If you call that causing it, well…”

“How was it that there was only the one green valley left, but you weren’t already in it?” Councilman Chaplin asked.

“I… we’d been in a bunker, under the city of Polis. I don’t know what it might have been called before. That’s where we’d spent six years riding out an event we called Praimfaya - when the remaining nuclear power plants that had been built a hundred years earlier melted down and unleashed a wave of fire and radiation across the Earth.”

Councilman Chaplin exchanged glances with the people on other side of him. “Then you were rescued by your friend Charmaine’s crew, returning from an asteroid mining colony.”

“Yes. But that was before we were friends.”

“What were you then?”

“Mortal enemies.”

“Yet now she entrusts you with her child.”

“Things changed. We came to Planet Alpha, and only had each other after being cast out of Sanctum, the only settlement there.”

“Which then led you here. Why?”

“Diyoza followed what must have been an apparition of her daughter into the Anomaly. And I followed her. I wasn’t going to let her die. She was my only friend.”

“As you can see, no one has died.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t know that. According to Gabriel, no one has ever come back from the Anomaly.”

All of the people around the table exchanged glances with each other. Octavia tracked all of them, knowing that there was something they weren’t telling her. Something they knew, something obvious, that she wasn’t yet in on.

“Or… have they? Have people come back from the Anomaly? Was Gabriel lying to me?”

“No, he probably wasn’t.” The woman sitting next to Octavia said. “But no one on what you call Planet Alpha really understands this Anomaly. They don’t know what it is for. They don’t know that it shouldn’t exist. They don’t know they are somewhere they’re not supposed to be. They don’t know that this Planet Alpha is not ready for human habitation. So within the memories of those colonists, there hasn’t been anyone that has… returned, as it were.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Octavia said warily, looking around at all of the people. “Are we… I mean, the way you’re talking… are you saying we’re not on Planet Alpha?”

“We’re not on what you call Planet Alpha, no.” Councilman Chaplin said. “But we do not call it Planet Alpha. We call it Gaia. Just like we call your Earth Terra.”

“Gaia and Terra. Both words for Earth. Earth goddesses.” Octavia said. “Are you saying we’re on yet a different planet?”

“We are.” Said the man on the other side of Octavia. “I am Councilman Dima Lukin. Welcome to Omphalos.”

The word rang a bell, and Octavia thought back to the mythology she knew. “The navel of the Earth. Centre of the universe?” Octavia asked.

“You know your mythology. Very good. We are the guardians, you could say, of humanity and its worlds across the universe. We settle the habitable planets, over and over again, making sure humanity survives. When we hear word that one of the worlds has been destroyed, that life has vanished from its surface, then we bring it back, as we have for millennia.”

“Bring it back?”

“My dear, do you really think that the apocalyptic events in your lifetime are the really the only ones to strike a world?”

“I thought they were. I thought we were alone. I thought we were what was left of humanity.”

“There is so much humanity you have yet to learn about, Octavia.” Councilman Chaplin said. “You have so much to learn, and now you will have that opportunity. Your Earth will rise again. From the ashes, it will rise, as it has many times before.”

Octavia’s blood ran cold, and she clutched Hope closer to her chest. “What did you just say?”

“That is the motto of Omphalos.” A woman explained. “No matter how many times a world collapses, it will return. We make sure of it. But we’ll get into all of that later. Right now, how about you tell us about what happened there, what precipitated the final evacuation of humanity from Terra, from your Earth?” 

Octavia didn’t respond, not looking up, not wanting to meet anyone’s eyes. _Could it be a coincidence?_ The memory of that phrase from the bunker brought back all sorts of unpleasant memories. Just the thought of what had happened in the bunker made her not want to look at Hope either, not wanting to voice such horrors in the child’s presence. Her chest tightened, and her breaths started coming short as panic began to set in.

“Councilwoman Perez, can’t you see the girl is terrified?” Another woman chided her. “This is a lot of information for her to take in, and even more to ask of her what she experienced as her world collapsed.”

“I’m not afraid.” Octavia said, a reflex, automatic when someone suggested that she was scared. Perhaps if she told herself that enough, she might believe it.

“I’m sorry, Octavia.” Councilman Lukin said. “This is clearly a difficult subject for you. Is there something easier that we could talk about? Your childhood, perhaps? Dr Warner said you were born on a space station orbiting Terra. Tell us about your family.”

_Bellamy._ Octavia pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, willing herself not to cry, not to cry about everything her brother had done to her, but how she still loved him regardless of that, what she’d done to him, and now wasn’t sure if she’d ever see him again. “I… Bellamy. The Ark had a one-child law. I was the second child. Bellamy was my older brother. He and my mother hid me from the world.”

“Did something happen to him?” Councilwoman Perez asked as Octavia dropped her hands back to the chair.

“No. He’s alive, last I saw him.”

“And when was that?”

“Just a few days before I entered the Anomaly.”

“He didn’t object to you being cast out of Sanctum?”

“He was the one who cast me out.”

Everyone fell silent, and Octavia didn’t dare look up at them. She could feel them passing judgment, more people passing judgment despite not knowing anything about her circumstances. She focused her attention back to Hope, at least someone who wasn’t judging her, and was now awake and looking up at her, tiny hands waving about. Octavia ran a gentle finger over Hope’s cheek and couldn’t help but smile as the little girl did too.

“Ah, so she does smile.” Councilman Chaplin said gently. “We understand, your past is one full of all sorts of thorns and unpleasantries. We won’t judge you for them. Everyone who comes here comes with some sort of past, but it can be wiped clean. You want a better future, don’t you? A future with peace, with plenty? You want to be happy?”

Octavia nodded, looking back up at the others around the table, who were, to her surprise, not looking at her with judgment in their eyes. They were peaceful. “I do want to be happy. But I don’t know if I can.”

“You can.” Councilwoman Perez assured her. “You can start a new life. Have a fresh start. Now knowing that Terra is dead, we have an important mission ahead of us to bring her back.”

“What can I do to help?” Octavia asked. “I _need_ to do something to help.”

“You will.” Councilman Lukin promised her. “If you want to help bring Terra back, you will have a place on that mission.”

“Then let’s do it. What do you need me to do?”

**_GABRIEL’S CAMP - EVENING_ **

“That tells us nothing.” Bellamy said. “So you grew up on another planet. What, the Anomaly is a… a wormhole to get there? That’s what they called them in the books I read on the Ark.”

“Don’t you understand?” Hope said. “You’re not supposed to be here. This planet is off-limits. No one is supposed to be here. It isn’t ready yet.”

“Isn’t ready yet?” Gabriel asked. “But we’ve been living here for over two hundred years.”

“And it hasn’t been easy, has it?” Hope asked him. “Toxins, psychosis, and so on? Do you think that’s what defines a habitable planet?”

“Any port in a storm.” Bellamy said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Earth was dead. That’s why we came here. And Eligius III came because the Earth was dying, they just got out before the bombs hit.”

“Omphalos estimates that it’ll still take another three to five hundred years, by local reckoning, for this planet, Gaia, to be habitable again. They’re working on it. But it is too dangerous here right now. The biological damage that exists on a molecular level here needs time to repair itself. That damage is hurting all of you, that damage is what created the Anomaly - it shouldn’t exist. It doesn’t exist on the other planets in Omphalos’ purview, like Terra.”

“Terra. Our Earth.” Echo confirmed. “There is a… I can’t believe I’m saying this… there’s a wormhole between our Earth and this Omphalos that you speak of?”

“If that’s what you want to call it, yes.” Hope said. “We are the guardians of the habitable planets. This was once one of them, and it will be again, but right now it is not.” She turned to Bellamy. “You think that you need to save your sister, but you’re wrong. Octavia has been working for the past twenty years to save _you._ Save all of you. All of your people. By bringing you home. Back to Terra. Back to Earth.”


	4. Chapter 4

**_GABRIEL’S CAMP - EVENING_ **

“How is my sister supposed to save us all and take us back to Earth if she’s dead?” Bellamy asked Hope. “Because with everything you’ve said, you still haven’t given me a reason as to why I should believe you that she’s still alive. That she survived what you did to her.”

“You really don’t understand how special your sister is, do you?” Hope said. “It doesn’t surprise me. People always feel threatened by her and what she’s capable of. Father William is too.”

“Father William?”

“That’s what I know him as. I think _ani_ and my mother know him by a different name too, but I’m not sure what that name is. He’s the one who has my mother. He’s the reason _ani_ had to go back. To save my mother. Because we don’t leave anyone behind.” Hope’s angry look was back as she looked at Bellamy. “Not something that I’d expect you to understand.”

Bellamy looked down, not saying anything.

“But I suppose it did work out for the best. If you hadn’t _abandoned_ her in the forest, she never would have met up with my mother, they never would have ended up in Omphalos. At least your abandonment gave _ani_ something that she never would have had in your presence. Twenty years of peace and plenty.”

“Twenty years.” Bellamy said. “Yet my sister doesn’t look a day over twenty-three. Care to explain that?”

“It’s simple, really.” Hope said. “Really very simple. But not something I’d recommend doing just for the hell of it.”

**_OMPHALOS - DAY_ **

“I’m glad that you’ve got an interest in joining the mission, but this takes time, Octavia. Before you get involved in the preparations, you also need to rest. Heal. Learn. All of this takes time. But time is something you have. Especially in your case, now.”

“Excuse me?”

“Dr Warner told us about your… particular condition.” Councilman Lukin said. “It is a heavy responsibility. I hope you’re ready to use it properly.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“You’ve been healed from a temporal flare that hit you on Gaia. That’s what Dr Warner told us.”

“Yes.”

“We’ve developed a treatment for that. Surely she explained it to you, and the side effects your unique situation has created.”

“She started to explain it, but I’m not a scientist and I didn’t understand what she meant. So she never finished.”

“Well, it is a good thing you’re already sitting down. Because this will come as a shock to you.”

“Am I… am I still dying? Is that what you mean? I feel like I’ve been healed.”

“You’re not dying. Quite the opposite, actually.”

“The opposite of dying is living.”

“Yes. You are living. And excepting a few extraordinary circumstances, you could do that forever.”

Octavia was dumbstruck. _“What?”_

“Are you familiar with what the temporal flare does to organic matter?”

“Organic matter?”

“Non-mineral. Plants, animals, humans.”

“It ages them.”

“It does. You experienced that first-hand. But Diyoza told us you also experienced another aspect of what it did.”

Octavia thought back to their time in the glowing cave. How Diyoza and Gabriel had left her there while they’d gone back to the place it had happened…

“The tree sap.”

“Yes. The sap from the petrified trees has healing properties. That’s one of the interesting things that has happened on Gaia with those flares.”

“But the tree sap didn’t help. I was still aging.”

“We’re not talking about the tree sap. We’re talking about you.”

Octavia looked down at her arm, her hand, remembering the pin prick of Dr Warner’s blood test, and how it had just vanished.

“My blood is like the tree sap.”

“In a manner of speaking. It wouldn’t be of much use to heal other people, not without draining you excessively at any rate, but it does heal you. But that’s only a part of it.”

“I’m listening.”

“You were aging unnaturally. The science that we have was able to reverse the particles in your blood that had caused that. We’ve done this before for others who have been affected the same way on Gaia and come through the Anomaly. But your high resistance to radiation, due to your life in space and on Terra with its elevated radiation levels, has added a new variable to the mix that we haven’t encountered before. The time particles - that is, the particles that aged you and that we could then reverse the polarity of to remove that excess age - are still in your blood, bound to the radiation in your bloodstream. Reversing the particles should have destroyed them once your natural age was reached, but the radiation they bound to means that they aren’t going anywhere. They’re keeping your body in a sort of stasis.”

“So I can’t age, is that what you’re saying?”

“That is what I’m saying.”

“I can’t age, and I heal rapidly. Are you saying I’m _immortal?”_

“In a manner of speaking.” Councilwoman Perez said. “Excessive blood loss, or the loss of a limb, could still kill you. Exposure to large amounts of toxic substances could as well. Any action that could cause rapid and extensive bodily damage.”

Octavia sat back in her chair, trying to process what they were telling her. _Immortal._ Essentially immortal, at least. Her warrior self would take that opportunity and run with it.

But she didn’t want to be a warrior anymore. She didn’t want to fight. She didn’t want to cause death. She wanted to bring life to the world. Protect new life, like the little girl strapped to her chest, asleep again and comforted in knowing Octavia was there for her.

Eternity to bring Earth - Terra - back. She could give her people what she’d promised them. It wasn’t too late.

 _As long as you draw breath, you can turn it around._ She would be drawing breath for quite some time now, and had eternity to solve the problems of the universe. 

How long would it take until she felt she’d balanced the scales of life and death? Would she ever be finished?

It didn’t matter. She’d spend the rest of her life, be it two minutes or two millennia, bringing a new era of peace and plenty to the universe.

**_GABRIEL’S CAMP - EVENING_ **

“So you’re telling me that my sister is now forty-three years old, yet she doesn’t look a day over twenty-three because her body is in some sort of stasis that doesn’t let her age?”

“Yes.” Hope said. “That is what I’m telling you.”

“That should be impossible.”

“You spent a hundred and twenty five years asleep and frozen and woke up just the same as you were before you went to sleep. Shouldn’t that be impossible too?” Hope pointed out.

“She’s right, Bellamy.” Echo said. “You saw as well as I did how Octavia dove through fire last night, stopping that Sanctum priestess, and didn’t have a scratch or burn on her afterward.”

“It still seems impossible.”

“All of your Skaikru technology seemed so impossible to me, yet it all existed. And then we learned about cryosleep, and mind wiping, and mind drives. One thing I’ve learned since meeting you and Raven is that no matter how improbable something seems at first, given enough time and effort, humanity will solve the problem somehow. In this Omphalos place that Hope describes, they’ve had millennia to do so.”

“They’ve had millennia to do so, they’ve had plenty of planets to colonize and experiment on and revive once one experiment is over.” Bellamy said, anger creeping into his voice. “That’s what I’m hearing. One experiment after another, one fails, doesn’t matter, because you’ve got the others, right? Because no one ever knows about the place that humanity actually comes from, you’ve made sure of that, haven’t you?”

Hope smiled, and that enraged Bellamy even more.

“What the hell are you smiling about? How could you support a system like that that leaves people out to suffer and die and not benefit from these technologies? Or who even lack basic necessities of life? You support abandoning people who are struggling to survive even one more day?”

“I never said I supported it, did I?” Hope said. “I’m smiling because the reaction you just had is the same one that _ani_ did, when she learned the truth of how Omphalos operates. I was only five years old at the time, but I remember that day as clearly as if it was yesterday. Maybe there’s hope for you yet.” She turned to Gabriel. “You want to know why Octavia was running when she came back through the Anomaly? That’s why. She’s spent the past fifteen years working on a way to break the system, to bring truth and light to the dark halls of Omphalos and beyond. She’s made a lot of enemies. Friends, too, certainly, but there are a lot of powerful people who didn’t want her to change the status quo. Father William chief among them. But she did. In Omphalos and beyond. This was supposed to be our last stop before we could leave them all behind and go back to Terra.”

“What has my sister done?” Bellamy asked warily.

“It’s beautiful.” Hope said, her smile going from impish to serene. “It’s so beautiful, and it is the key to humanity’s survival across the universe. You have to let her go for now. She’ll come back for you. But this is her destiny, Bellamy. She was meant for this.”

Bellamy shook his head. “No. No. This isn’t some fairy tale, or one of her stories. We don’t have destinies. We’re not chosen. We’re just people.”

“You misunderstand me. _She_ chose this path. _She_ wrote this story. All you have to do is help us bring her vision to life.”

“What story? What vision? Bringing us back to Earth - Terra?”

“More than that. But I can’t just explain it. You have to see. Take me back to Sanctum. I need to talk to…” Hope drifted off, deep in thought, as if trying to dredge up some names from her memory. “Raven and Jackson. Take me to them, they should be able to show you.”

“Wait.” Echo said. “One question, before we go. What do these symbols mean?”

Hope touched her face. “They are what tethers those of us who slide between worlds to the timeline. Different worlds move at different speeds relative to each other. That’s why _ani_ appeared to only be missing from here for a few seconds, while she spent twenty years in Omphalos. But when we slide, we’re able to tether timelines to one another. I don’t understand the science of it, but when she left, she tethered the timelines of Omphalos and Gaia together, so as four days passed here, four days passed there, when at other times the timelines work differently. So when _ani_ activated the keystone to take her back, that was the moment that she would have remembered everything from what Father William tried to erase - so it called me to stay and keep the tether, while she returned to save my mother.

 _"Ani_ has been playing a cat and mouse game with Father William for years, and while she’s made a lot of gains in the society of Omphalos, she’s never been able to crack him.” Hope looked down at her hands. “She came back here despite knowing she’d lose her memories because she had faith that she’d find that last piece of the puzzle somehow, and then he’d no longer be an obstacle. That there were some answers here that could help, but that she’d have to talk to people who had always been enemies.”

“So you stabbed her… why, precisely?” Bellamy asked. “You’ve tried to convince me that she’s fine, that _you’re_ not an enemy of hers, but you haven’t said why you did it.”

“I have. Her blood. We need her blood on this side, so that we can be ready when she comes back with my mother.”

“Couldn’t have gone with something less lethal-looking?”

“I didn’t have a lot of time, all right? She was going to vanish at any moment.” Hope sighed. “But she’ll be fine. She heals quickly, and she has help. People waiting for her. As well as people who went with her.”

“Went _with_ her?”

“I felt it. She activated the keystone, and as I came through the Anomaly, I could feel those she brought with her.”

“People who were in Sanctum?” Echo asked.

“Must have been, since it seems no one else vanished from here. I don’t know the details. I just know there were four people she brought with her, and she would have had to have some sort of blood connection to them.”

“Are these likely to be the people she could get those answers she needed from? Those enemies?”

“Do you know many enemies who have exchanged blood with each other?” Hope asked.

“Unlikely.” Echo said. “Are these symbols part of what Octavia was still trying to figure out? Or did she understand their purpose and mission?”

Hope thought for a bit. “They could be. She knows all of the symbols, but there’s a story that connects them to Father William that she was looking for, but Omphalos didn’t give her the answers she needed. She’s been searching across worlds, but none of them had the key. So the last chance for an answer to that question was here, with the people you brought with you from Terra.”

“Echo, what is this about? Why do you care about the symbols so much?” Bellamy asked. “We have to go, see who could have vanished from Sanctum, talk to Raven and Jackson…”

“I think I have the answers Octavia needs.” Echo said. “How do I find her?”

“Echo, no. You can’t go in there. Who knows what you’d be walking into.”

“As you and everyone else have liked to remind me, I’m a spy. I’ll manage. I just need to know how to find her.”

Hope looked off into nothingness yet again, deep in thought. “Yes. _Yes._ Echo, you could be the one with the answers she needs. But you won’t be able to find her if you just walk in.” Hope said. “Do you trust me?”

“No. Trust has to be earned.”

“Do you trust Octavia?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s my knife?”

Gabriel picked it up from where it sat on a table behind him. Hope reached for it, but Gabriel held it out of her reach. “Why?”

“There’s a compartment in the handle. I had to collect some of her blood. If you don’t want me touching it, then take some - but not all - of that blood into a syringe and inject it into Echo.”

“Wait.” Bellamy said. “What will that do?”

“I can’t explain it. You’ll need Raven for that. But it will help Echo find _ani_ in Omphalos. I promise you.”

“Does the colour of my blood matter?” Echo asked, looking at the syringe that Gabriel was preparing. “Sanctum turned me into a Nightblood.”

“I don’t think so.” Hope said. “We’ve been to all sorts of worlds with all sorts of different blood.”

“Echo, are you sure?” Bellamy asked. “We don’t know what this is going to do.”

“Your sister has a mission, Bellamy. What I can tell her will help her achieve it. You have to let me go. Please. She’s already been away for hours, who knows what has happened there in the meantime.”

Echo held her arm out to Gabriel, and he injected Octavia’s blood into her arm. As he pulled the syringe out, a drop of blood that was half red and half black beaded at the tip for a moment before dripping to the ground. They all watched as the injection site healed over, the amount of Octavia’s blood sufficient for such a tiny wound, and Echo looked up at Hope.

“Seems you were telling the truth. Now what? What am I supposed to be feeling?”

“It’ll take some time to kick in. Best get going to the Anomaly.”

“Wait.” Gabriel said. “Take some antitoxin. The toxin is strong around the Anomaly, you don’t need it interfering.”

“I’m going with you.” Bellamy said.

“You can’t.” Hope, Echo and Gabriel said at the same time.

“We need you here.” Hope said. “You know your people. I don’t. Not personally, anyway. Only from stories.”

“If you get too close to the Anomaly, it might draw you in as well.” Gabriel said. “The Anomaly does that. When I took Octavia and Diyoza there, I didn’t intend for them to go in. It could do that to you too. And like Hope said, we need you here.”

“This is something I have to do myself.” Echo reassured Bellamy. “Octavia’s forgiven me, but I still need to make up to her what I did. Almost killing her. Twice.” Echo grimaced, pressing a hand to her forehead. “What the -”

“There it comes.” Hope said. “Echo, go.”

Echo nodded, looking up at Gabriel. “Which way?”

“Look for the bright yellow and green vortex. Can’t miss it. Just don’t walk into one of its offshoots, the flares. Go straight for the centre.”

“Okay.” Echo gave Bellamy a long kiss. “I’ll be okay. I’ll find your sister.”

“Be safe.”

“I will.”

With that, Echo stumbled out of the tent, looking through the darkness for the vortex that Gabriel spoke of.

**_SANCTUM - EVENING_ **

Raven, Emori and Jackson used a stretcher to take Clarke from the operating room back to the palace, back to Josephine’s room. They tucked her into the bed, and Jackson set up the IV and medical equipment necessary to monitor her.

“She can rest here.” He said. “All we can do is give her time. Give her brain time to heal itself, and hopefully by the time it does, we’ll have solved the mysteries and brought everyone back.”

“What if we shouldn’t be back?” Emori exclaimed, to everyone’s confusion, including her own. She shook her head a few times, as if trying to clear it. “Sorry, I don’t know what that was. Of course I want everyone to come back. I’m sorry. I don’t - I don’t know what happened to me.”

“You’ve got a mind drive in your head too.” Raven said thoughtfully, walking around Emori in a circle. “Who knows what it could be doing to you.”

“I appreciate your concern, Raven, but I’m fine. I’m myself, there are no other minds on the drive that could mess with my head. It was just - I don’t know what, but it is gone now. There’s just me here, okay?”

“If you say so.” Raven said, clearly not believing what she was saying. “I still think it would be a good idea for Jackson to monitor all of you with mind drives. Watch for brain abnormalities.”

“She’s not wrong, Emori.” Jackson said. “We should check you and Murphy too. If you don’t want to take them out, that’s fine, but it would be good to make sure that it isn’t having any adverse effects.”

“Especially considering we don’t know where the Commanders went.” Raven said. “Sheidheda especially.”

“What?” Emori said. “You don’t know where the Commanders went? The ones who should be in the Flame?”

“I destroyed the Flame.” Raven said quietly. “I destroyed the Flame to prevent Sheidheda from killing Madi. But Sheidheda didn’t die. His consciousness may have escaped destruction. Or the other Commanders could have. I don’t know. But at least one mind of some kind escaped the Flame and uploaded itself somewhere while we were on the mothership.” Raven looked at both Emori and Clarke warily. “Whether that means it uploaded to another computer system, or whether it uploaded to a mind drive, I don’t know. Any of you could have one of the Commanders in your head, and if it is Sheidheda, we’ll all be in trouble. I tried to kill that son of a bitch once, if he’s back again… he might be harder to kill this time.”

**_ANOMALY - NIGHT_ **

Echo had been stumbling through the forest for quite some time, unsure as to what she was seeing, experiencing. Sometimes she saw the Anomaly ahead of her, sometimes she didn’t, sometimes it was just darkness, sometimes there were other people, sometimes a bright white room… she thought the antitoxin was supposed to prevent weird visions, but this seemed to be something completely different from what she’d experienced during the red sun.

As Echo entered the clearing with the Anomaly rearing up in front of her, she thought she saw Octavia standing in front of the flames.

“Octavia?” Echo asked, confused.

“When you’re through, turn right, and run like hell.”

And just like that, Octavia was gone, and the Anomaly was all Echo saw.

“Right it is.” Echo said, walking straight into the Anomaly.

**_CLARKE’S SKYBOX CELL - NIGHT_ **

Clarke opened her eyes to find herself back in her Skybox cell, drawings of her life all over the walls.

 _Wait…_ she wondered, brain groggy. _This isn’t a dream. This is my mindspace. Why am I here?_

She tried to piece together the events that had brought her here. Regaining control of her body. Killing Josephine for good. Her mother’s death, someone else wearing her mother’s body, floating that body and its resident. Saving Madi from Sheidheda. Losing Madi, somehow, to the Anomaly. Yelling at Russell, trying to hit him, starting to bleed from the nose again. Somewhere in all of that Jackson saying she needed to be sedated, that her brain needed time to heal after the trials and tribulations it had been through after sharing space with Josephine Lightbourne.

 _I’ve been induced into a coma._ Clarke thought. _Smart. Not quite sleep, not waking, so… here we are again._

Clarke turned her head to survey her memories, drawn all over the walls. The sleeping niche wasn’t the most comfortable in the world, but it would do to rest in while her body dealt with all of this.

The drawings just showed her ghosts. Lexa, glowing, in the minutes after their first and only time together. Finn, stopping the different groups of delinquents from fighting each other. Wells, everywhere and anywhere in their days before Earth, their early days on the Ark, their days before Clarke’s world had been turned upside down.

Then others whose fate she didn’t know anything about… Bellamy, standing by her as he wrote her name down in the 100th spot on the list of survivors. Echo, as she interrogated her in Shallow Valley. Octavia, stepping foot on Earth for the first time, the first of the Hundred to do so. Niylah and the black panther. Miller, Gaia and of course Madi… all currently unaccounted for.

The peaceful machine hum that buzzed through her veins suddenly jarred, turning into a loud clanking noise. Clarke saw a panel appear in what had been a smooth metal floor.

She sat up to investigate, but before she could stand, the panel flew off, and Octavia sat up in the space under the floor.

“Hi Princess.” Octavia cocked her head. “We need to talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming next week:
> 
> _**7x02 The Violence We Do To Ourselves** \- Bellamy, Hope and Gabriel encounter an obstacle while returning to Sanctum. Octavia attempts to negotiate with Miller and Gaia as they struggle to accept their new reality._
> 
> Be sure to subscribe to the series (OsleyaKomWonkru's Season 7 of The 100) so that you get updates for the whole season and not just the individual episodes!


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